Stress has become a permanent fixture in modern society, especially in the workplace. Statistics show that the most common cause of stress is work-related pressure.
Stress can be a big deal – long-term stress can cause many health problems such as depression, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease among employees. In addition, the employer ends up paying more in health costs and experiences higher absence rates among staff, loss of productivity, higher turnover, and less employee engagement overall. This is why learning how to handle stress is important.
Here are our tips for handling stress in the workplace:
1. Stay on top of your tasks
Planning ahead can go a long way in dealing with stress at work. Being organized will help you get to work on time and will bring more efficiency to your work. Adding more tools like PDFelement into the mix can help. PDFelement increases efficiency with seamless pdf editing and creation tools, plus it gives you the ability to easily work with scanned documents. Plus, there are any number of other document management tools that will help life the stress right off your shoulders.
2. Keep your workspace comfortable
Physical discomfort can also be a cause of stress at the workplace. If your office chair is uncomfortable, then you will have a sore back which will make you more reactive to stress. Ensuring a comfortable, soothing, and quiet workspace can help in managing stress at work. Also, giving your desk personal decorative touches makes it feel homier, and therefore less stress-inducing.
3. Identify stressors
Mentally recording which situations cause you stress so you can prepare better for them in the future is another method for managing stress at work. Make a note of your feelings, and remember details about these situations so that you can find a pattern for how you manage and cope with these stressful situations. Remember to take deep breaths every now and then too!
4. Make sure you get enough sleep
Poor sleep can also be a contributing factor to stress because lack of sleep hinders your ability to deal with stress and negatively affects your outlook and mood. But sometimes you can’t help having a sleepless night. So how do you relieve stress at work if you are irritable and on edge from lack of sleep? These tips can help you get a manageable sleep schedule:
Regular exercise releases endorphins and provides a boost to overall well-being that helps reduce stress.
Aim for 8 hours of sleep to make sure that your body and mind are fresh and alert.
Turn off your phone and TV at least an hour before sleeping because staring at a screen shortly before trying to sleep damages your sleep cycle
Avoid going to sleep late as much as possible – it can have long-term effects on your overall sleep schedule
5.Make friends in the workplace
Having positive relationships at work is extremely effective in reducing stress at work because it provides a support system. Talking about your work problems with your co-workers can help to curb negative thoughts. Leave your phone at your desk during lunch and interact with your coworkers instead. Finding humor in stressful situations and laughing is also another effective strategy for dealing with stress because research shows that laughter reduces stress and tension.
And there you have it – hope you enjoyed these tips! We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.